The Human Experience · Episode
Episode 171 – Surfing Monster Waves, Mastering Fear & Flow State w/ Laird Hamilton
A conversation with Laird Hamilton
If you’ve never heard of Laird Hamilton, one might feel compelled to give you the ice-bucket-challenge awakening to clear your brain fog. In his half-plus century on our big, blue, mostly-water planet,…
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If you’ve never heard of Laird Hamilton, one might feel compelled to give you the ice-bucket-challenge awakening to clear your brain fog. In his half-plus century on our big, blue, mostly-water planet, Hamilton, 53, has thrived in it as a surfer, innovator, athlete, author, inventor, stuntman, model, producer, TV host, fitness and nutrition guru, coffee connoisseur, husband, father, and adrenalin junkie. If nothing else, he’s known as the surfer to catch the “heaviest wave”, the “Millennium Wave” — Jurassic Peak, in Tahiti’s Teahupo’o (pronuonced “cho-po”) — on August 17, 2000, which is featured in the surf documentary Riding Giants and captured in a front-page picture of Surfer Magazine, February 2001, with the caption, “oh my god…”
Hamilton has been all over the tube — with or without pro-beach volleyball player wife, Gabrielle Reece — in commercials, and appearances on Hell’s Kitchen, Gary Unmarried, Phineas and Ferb, IFC’s Iconoclast, alongside Pearl Jammer, Eddie Vedder, and FitTV’s Insider Training.
Hamilton has been interviewed on TV by the likes of ESPN, CBS, Charlie Rose, CNN, E! 60 Minutes, Chelsea Handler, Conan O’Brien, Steven Colbert, Ellen DeGeneres, and Oprah Winfrey, in her Oprah Winfrey’s Master Class. He’s been the subject of print interviews with USA Today, Maui News, Surfer Magazine, SUP Magazine, where he was given their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, Juice Magazine, Men’s Health, and Men’s Journal, where he is currently a contributing editor. He has thus far penned one book, Force Of Nature: Mind, Body, Soul. And, Of Course, Surfing, in 2008. Force Of Nature is considered the go-to manual for people seeking inspiration for a healthy lifestyle.
Hamilton has appeared in movies, like, North Shore (1987), and Moving Target (1989). He’s performed stunts in, Waterworld (1995), Die Another Day (2002), The Descendants (2011), and “Point Break (2015). And documentaries? There’s been a few: Greg Stump’s Groove Requiem in the Key of Ski (1990); Radical Attitude (1992); Wake Up Call (1996); Step Into Liquid (2003); and Riding Giants (2004). In 2006, he and friend, Dave Kalama, biked and paddled the entire 450 miles plus Hawai’ian Island chain. The journey was documented in Don King’s A Beautiful Son, in support of autism sufferers. And now a new biographical surf documentary by Rory Kennedy, daughter of Robert, debuted at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in January. Take Every Wave: The Life Of Laird Hamilton opened to positive reviews and its audience went beyond surf enthusiasts.
Going Against the Wave
Perhaps the reason why some may have never heard of Hamilton is because he is an iconoclast, like the show he starred in one time. He was vilified in the surf world for playing in the deep, deep end. Though he’s made huge cameos in his public life, he still avoids self-promotion. He’s serious about being the ambassador of surf and water sports. He’s not a showboater in that annoying, peacockish way. It’s just not in his mental makeup. In a video on his Laird Super Food website, Laird Hamilton: Challenger of Human Endurance, he explains his nature.
“I surfed in a couple of contests as a kid, like, ‘Hey, win a t-shirt!’ You and your buddies go out and it’s like a fun thing. And then as soon as the money came into it, and the aggression towards one another in a competitive situation … I was already too aggressive. I didn’t need a situation that created more aggression and brought out what I felt like, was the worst part of me. I was trying to learn, like, deal with suppressing that or maybe constructively venting it, not cultivating it. And, so I just vowed not to subject my surfing to the opinions of men.”
Hamilton also pissed off the surfer purists by experimenting and expanding the limits of riding the water. He and a couple of renegades developed tow-in surfing in 1992, where a surfer is towed further into water via personal water craft or helicopter, to reach places to difficult to paddle to. He then popularized stand-up paddle boarding (SUP). And he developed hydrofoil boarding, where a long fin on the bottom of the board allows maneuverability in windy conditions and other feats of physics.
Hamilton, AKA, the Water Man, powered through the jetsam and flotsam to gain respect from industry pros. Surfer Magazine calls him “the sport’s most complete surfer, displaying almost unnerving expertise in a multitude of disciplines, and flat out surfing’s biggest, boldest, bravest, and the best big waver surfer in the world today, bar none.”
On land, Hamilton and Reece, with friend and human performance thinker/doer, Brian Mackenzie, launched their XPT (xtreme performance training) fitness program, which includes a gnarly pool water workout combining swimming and weight-lifing, and focuses on breathing exercises. Hamilton also developed Laird Super Food, which is organic coffee with fat energy creamers. He is involved with charity and with educating young and old about the water.
The Water Man In His Element
Roger Ebert wrote in his review of Riding Giants, “Before seeing Riding Giants, my ideas about surfing were formed by the Gidget movies, The Endless Summer, the Beach Boys, Elvis and lots of TV commercials. Surfin’ Safari was actually running through my head on the way into the screening. … Riding Giants is about altogether another reality. …”
That misconception is prevalent to those outside. There’s more to it than that — so much so, that Hamilton’s friend and Malibu neighbor, Rory Kennedy, the daughter of Robert Kennedy, who has 35 documentaries in her vault, approached him about making a documentary about his life. Hamilton admits he “wondered if his life were enough for an accomplished documentarian.” His intention was not to do a surf movie. He’d already done a few of those. And her intention was to take a new approach. She liked the surfing aspect, but was less interested in making a surfer film, she told the Salt Lake Tribune.
“What I am interested in is the character and what are the qualities in Laird — whether you’re interested in politics or business or sports — just being the best in whatever your pursuit is, what’s the difference?”
Once Hamilton understood Kennedy’s angle, he was on board, so to speak.
“There’s an opportunity to tell a bigger story and it’s not a surf film. A lot of what I’ve been able to do transcends surfing and is more about life,” he said in the SL Tribune interview. “I feel this is a larger representation of that message and that concept.”
Kennedy, in a Park City TV In the Can interview at the Sundance screening, said, “You look at him and you think he’s had an easy life. … Everything he has done and everything he has become is because of him making it happen.”
There’s a lesson, and something of value to take from the film, Kennedy said. “ … To pursue your dreams. To give everything to it. To live your life truthfully towards that. And you see somebody who’s done that fully and completely. And that’s interesting.”
Hamilton hopes he can get more people into the ocean, so that maybe he can get more people concerned about the ocean. He hopes to get more people to have fun, so that maybe they will be more concerned about taking care of themselves and others. And his number one rule in his 10-point plan to live forever: “Forget age. Just keep driving the car. Keep it moving!”
He outlined the plan in a 2016 article featured on his website. That first rule is so important and he lives it himself every day. And so do most of the friends in his circle. “I have a friend, Don Wildman, who’s 83 years old — and the guy’s an absolute stud who works out with weights, mountain bikes, paddles, surfs every day. Don’s a living example of what it’s like when you just keep driving the car. I think what happens is that we decide we’re old and we just stop, and everything stops working. There’s so much stigma and weirdness around being older.”
Hamilton hopes Take Every Wave will raise enthusiasm for fitness, for nature, for life. He reiterates in the In the Can interview.
“It’s meant to inspire people to do as the film title is to catch every wave. That kind of sums it up in a way, to catch every opportunity, ever moment,” he said. “Live a maximum life whatever that means to you given what your surroundings and your circumstances are.”
Gabrielle Reece and Laird Hamilton
CREDIT: Peggy Sirota
~The 411~:
In the Can Interview On PCTV
Men’s Journal bio
Beachgrit Article
Teahupo’o Millennium Wave Iconic Photo
Laird’s 10-Point Plan To Live Forever
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Ideas worth returning to
Quotes
Five substantial excerpts from the published transcript, lightly edited for clarity without changing their meaning.
“My relationship with fear, and what fear has enabled me to do, developed over a long period of time. I was scared so often that I became well versed in being scared, and through that experience I learned how to harness it. Fear is a very powerful source of energy when you develop the ability to use it.”
From the conversation“Instincts and feelings arise from the unconscious mind. You can develop a better relationship with your conscious mind when you heed those warnings—those little signals or boons, whatever you choose to call them—as they cross the boundary into awareness.”
From the conversation“Breath is the spirit of life, and the practice is about bringing consciousness to breathing. The experience includes many activities and repeated opportunities to learn breathing techniques that people can use in their own lives and fitness. The great thing about XP is that it continues to evolve rather than following one fixed format.”
From the conversation“The key to the fountain of youth is to be a kid: to remain excited and enthusiastic. If you want to be alive while you are living, find things that excite you. Be willing to learn, try new things, and stop worrying so much about what other people think of you.”
From the conversation“The real lessons I have learned came from the ocean. I went to the school of the ocean, where you learn the fundamentals of life: humility, discipline, perseverance, and fear. Every great thing I have been given has come from the ocean, whether through what I did there or what it taught me.”
From the conversation
About the guest
Laird Hamilton
If you’ve never heard of Laird Hamilton, one might feel compelled to give you the ice-bucket-challenge awakening to clear your brain fog. In his half-plus century on our big, blue, mostly-water planet, Hamilton, 53, has thrived in it as a surfer, innovator, athlete, author, inventor, stuntman, model, producer, TV host, fitness and nutrition guru, coffee connoisseur, husband, father, and adrenalin junkie. If nothing else, he’s known as the surfer to catch the “heaviest wave”, the “Millennium Wave” — Jurassic Peak, in Tahiti’s Teahupo’o (pronuonced “cho-po”) — on August 17, 2000, which is featured in the surf documentary Riding Giants and captured in a front-page picture of Surfer Magazine, February 2001, with the caption, “oh my god…”
Beyond the conversation
Selected work
Official sites, books, research, and institutional pages verified for this guest.
The complete conversation
Transcript
Archival transcript · Published on the canonical episode page
This archival source does not include reliable passage timestamps or consistent speaker attribution. The wording and any labels below are preserved from the original transcript page; no speakers or timing have been inferred.
welcome to the human experience podcast the only podcast designed to fuse your left and right brain hemispheres and feed it the most entertaining and mentally engaging topics on the planet as we approach our ascent please make sure your frontal temporal and occipital loads are in their full upright position as you take your seat of consciousness relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening
[Music]I’m good maybe I should just stop now but then your ego or something gets in the way and then you continue on and then you’re like you know whack and then you’re like oh that broke my collarbone or oh I broke my leg or that’s where we shine is when we’re humble and we’re realistic about our position in the universe but the simplest way to word it really is be in the now so if there’s no beginning and no end then there’s just the now I’m participating me that the
dust me the the insignificant is actually participating in riding energy I mean it’s pretty pretty fantastic
[Music]what’s up guys Xavier katana here and wow what an episode with legendary big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton just a information-packed episode about being in high-performance states and we get into flow state get into performance get into supplements and just how to keep your body in this rhythm of being able to achieve these amazing states so everything that you want to know from someone who has been in those states thousands of times so who you guys enjoy
this one thank you guys so much for the human experiences in session my guest for today’s mr. Laird Hamilton Laird my good sir it’s an honor welcome to the human experience well I just want to say thank you very much for having me and it’s my honor so Laird I mean you you made such a a wide-ranging impact on the world of surfing and you know I’ve studied your career and I know who you are but for anyone who might not know who you are
can you just give us a short biography please well I am uh Laird Hamilton and I was a poor young man in Hawaii rough life I’m considered to be a Waterman which this means that you are multi skilled in disciplines of the ocean and of the water and you have an understanding of of its workings and I you know was raised in Hawaii I had some of the most rugged dirt breaks in the world and all the people that I looked up to were were
great Waterman fisherman divers and surfers and you know and the greatest of these and the ones that I had the most respect for were the men that rode the giant waves and and so that that impact on my life made me become a rider of giant waves and always in pursuit of riding giant waves in through that process I’ve been involved with windsurfing and qaida and kind of been involved in the innovation of kiting of foil surfing of stand-up paddling of a
technique called tow-in surfing which allows us to ride some of the biggest waves in the world and the list keeps going yeah it’s it’s really profound this connection that you’ve made with the ocean it’s not a sense of control because you’re not controlling the waves when did you find out that surfing was going to be this huge thing for you well I I think I had the fortune to kind of know when I was very young that I was gonna do something in surfing or surfing
was gonna do something in me but there was just you know this connection that I had with his art in this element so it started very young I take 3 or 4 years old you know I mean I think I was a obnoxious as a young man just I would run around and first of all I tell everybody who my stepdad was he was a you know a great surfer and and and then I would say I was gonna be great and they would just be like hey would you just please shut up yeah you know you
you talk about your own philosophy regarding fear how do you move through that how do you move through this sense of fear when you have this 200 foot wave coming at you well I think the relationship that I have with fear and what fear has enabled me to do has come over a long period of time I think I’ve developed a relationship with beer I think I’m growing up I think it was scared so often that I became pretty versed at being scared and
through that I think it gave me an ability to learn how to harness it I think you know that fear as an energy source is a very powerful thing and so the when you have the ability to use fear as energy it makes you strong it makes you fast it makes you make really good decisions it’s it’s it’s something to respect and appreciate and so you know again I think I’ve developed a relationship with beer I’ve learned how to harness it and use it as a as an
energy source and na it’s brought me incredible rewards so I just want to feel this with you because when you’re approaching a wave of that size or you’re assessing you know where you’re going to enter and how you’re gonna logistically plan riding this wave I mean what’s going through your mind when you do that it’s a pretty methodical process it’s something that you first of all you’re pulling from years and years and years of experience you know you’re pulling
from 30 40 50 thousand hours of experience you’re using all of that data to help you make the right approach make the right plan you know the one thing about the ocean and waves that you kind of always on guard is that there’s never two moments that are the same and I think that my respect in my fear for these beasts that respect and that fear forces me into a very consistent approach yet with always the preparation that stuff happens and so I always say
there’s only three ways you can go about doing anything that’s real dangerous and you know one of them is denial and one of those ignorant and the other one is operating within your experience and most of the time it’s kind of some kind of combination of all three of those so you come in kind of experience you have a little bit of denial and and a little bit of ignorance or you know however it’s gonna be but I approach this rule
mathematically and then I use instinct the guide you know I use instinct as it as a guide when you know when something does isn’t right go with that heal that use that skill that we’ve developed you know survive yeah so you mean that that when you feel something wrong you kind of eject out of that you’re just you follow that feeling absolutely yeah well or I go in too high okay so I all go into a high caution mode like hey you know what I’m a little
thumbs up I’ll go into high caution and that served me well and so I hate those those warnings has there been a time where you’ve been in that situation and maybe you didn’t follow that instinct maybe we didn’t follow that little warning and you were in a situation where it got dangerous well yeah more than once usually it results I’m sort of injury so I mean you just got to go hey you know what I’m good maybe I should just stop now but
then your ego or something gets in the way and then you continue on and then you’re like you know whack and then you’re like oh that broke my collarbone or oh I broke my leg or you know and you but yet if you would have defeated those eternal warnings sooner you wouldn’t you wouldn’t have you know the unconscious mind moves at 32,000 times the speed of the conscious mind which which technically means that it didn’t almost you know kind of see the future and so
in a way you know those instincts and those feelings come from the unconscious you can develop a relationship with your conscious mind when you heed those warnings in those little days of boons or whatever you want to call them they come up and crossed over that blank you know that’s that where you’re able to start to kind of create a better connection between that unconscious warning system survival system that moves it such a higher rate has the
slower you know cognitive conscious mind yeah that’s very profound I really like that a lot you know I’m sure you are aware of what flow state is right being in flow you know is there a process that you use I mean when you’re in the middle of a pipe and you’re just you’re riding that wave what’s happening with time and does time slow down does it speed up do you feel like you have more time just everything kind of move in slow motion how does
that work well there’s an expansion of time that occurs when you’re in that moment I mean you know I describe sometimes the act of riding a wave as a place where there is no beginning and there is no end it just is and you leave off where you left off and you start where you you know you left off I think that there’s something about that that keeps us coming back for more that we really desire that state the simplest way to word it really is be in the now
so if there’s no beginning and no end then there’s just the now so if the riding a wave is actually being in the now yet you’re in movement it’s something very special this is something you know very unique about that sensation that really keeps us coming back for more I mean we you know design our lives around this this desire for this state yes yes definitely there’s just large aspect of surrender remember looking at these images of you
on these these massive just walls of water and you’re just this tiny little human being and it almost looks like you’re making these brushstrokes you know on this this canvas that that is the ocean the surrender play into this just letting go of your ego letting go of those things well it’s all about submission it’s all about the render it’s all about being at the mercy and it’s really it’s when we are at our best right we’re at our best
when we are humble and proper perspective of what we really are which is dust in the wind at the end of the day that’s where we shine is when we’re humble and we’re realistic about our position in the universe where a particle and a very small part and so and when you come from that and you go okay I’m humble I’m submitting and then you’re able to be in this less humble more significant situation that’s where the experience comes in that’s the whole
sensation is like I’m participating me that the dust me the the insignificant is actually participating in riding energy I mean it’s pretty pretty fantastic yeah I would say so um yeah that’s such a beautiful way to put it into perspective and just um you know I feel like we walk around a lot with our egos kind of at the front of what we’re doing and when you’re in a position like that you get humbled very quick so it’s it’s difficult to not be in this sort of
humble state forces you to be in this humble state when you’re facing this this force of nature coming at you you created extreme performance training you co-created this can you tell us a bit about you know what xbt is and how it works well expertise is a really a experiencial opportunity for people to participate in our lifestyle but also be exposed to some information that has that impact on our lives and some fitness technique and nutrition and
breathing and thermal regulation and some of these things that have had a profound effect on us you know we have experts people can come for two-and-a-half experience and kind of get a high impact version of our lifestyle like where they get to come and you know and and take some stuff home with them that can have an impact on the way they live how they live you know and what they live for and so on and so it’s a it’s a way for us to share
some of the information that has been shared with us you know it has a profound effect that I mean every one of these xpg experiences that we’ve had people walk away change and it has that same impact on us and so we really enjoy putting them on and every time we put on one it seems like we we we gain a few friends I don’t know if we’re gonna continue to be able to do that but you know we can never have too many friends and it’s just great to see people being
open and willing it has a tendency to pull a really unique group of people that are really open and interested in in continuing to evolve as we are breathing is a big part of x.p team right which way are we using breathing consciously to achieve this high-performance state we’re first of all we’re just giving breathing the credence or the respect that it deserves on the priority of existence you know you can live for you know few weeks without eating you can
live for a few days without drinking water and you can only live a few minutes without breathing so within that state then where does breathing Falls it seems like it Falls is probably the most important thing that we do and then there’s a relationship you know with the spirit and the breath you know there’s indigenous tribes that about the spirit of life the breath is the spirit of life it’s about bringing consciousness the breath now as far as
the experience goes I mean we’re gonna do a bunch of different activities and they’ll be a multiple opportunities to do some breathing techniques a the people will be able to implement into their own lives into their fitness ultimately the great thing about XP is that it continues to evolve so there’s no set format we know it’s not like we go hey this is calisthenics and this is what you do and this is how you do it and then it’s gonna be you know if you’ve
been to one class you’ve been to a mall this is something that’s always evolving and it’s going to continue to evolve as we learn and and we’re all which hopefully is indefinitely yeah very interesting um hilarity I really want to talk about some of your personal battles and you know not on the ocean we all have demons we all have that that sort of Dark Passenger I mean it has there been something like that in your life that you’ve had to sort of
conquer and defeat there’s a battle of the bowl everyday I think that in life you know there’s a South Pole the North Pole you know we’re like a battery there’s a negative and the positive and you know what dominates the majority of your thinking and the majority of your time spent doing now is it in the negative as a positive as long as the positive is more profound or having a bigger impact than negative you’re all good you know I’ve been sober
for ten years I I used to love the drink you know a good Bordeaux I love red wine at a certain point I just thought you know nothing’s good it’s coming from this you know and when we say all the dumbest things never did when I was drinking so I’m no better or no different than any other person I have all the desires that all people do and I choose to go the direction I go and those choices happen to be but on the majority of the side positive and so you
know I’ve had family stuff growing up I’ve had relations stuff being grown up and I’ve had injury stuff and I must say that I’ve been through all the trials and tribulations that human can go through because I haven’t and I’ve been blessed and saved from a lot of a lot of grief but I have you know been through enough stuff to have had an opportunity to decide what way I wanted to go and I’m fortunate to be able to say that I try to continue to always choose the
light you know use the light keep focusing on the light and what you occupy your time with and what you choose will be the thing that dominates so if you’re negative and it’s all dark and don’t be surprised you know a lot of darkness is around you and if you’re positive and you’re choosing the light and that will be surprised if a lot of lights happening you know there’s certain laws in the universe and and I’m fortunate to know
this thing called Instant Karma where usually when I think something bad or do something bad I pay instantly and has a tendency to make you learn quicker or maybe not but you know I choose to take those as lessons and try to make changes yeah 100% agreed with that especially regarding just alcohol I personally I quit myself and you know that’s that’s such a big change this once we start to realize that alcohol is just a poison for the
body I mean it once you move away from it for a while you realized how negative it is for you there was this there was an interview that you did this article where you shared your 10-point plan to live forever you know was there one of those ten points that kind of struck you the most there’s one where you talk about you know forget how old you are taking care of everyday priorities is there one of those that kind of resonates more than the others
I think to retain your youthful enthusiasm I think that you know that the key to the Fountain of Youth is to be a git and to be excited to be enthusiastic I think as soon as you lose that you’re dead anyway so I mean have a certain point if you want to be alive while you’re alive then be alive and be excited and be enthusiastic it doesn’t mean every second don’t be like mister hey smiley guy I just meant find things that make you excited be a kid and be
willing to learn and try new stuff and don’t care what people think of you and I mean I think that really I mean listen you got to eat good you gotta have good relationships got to work out you gotta be it’s an endless list right it’s not anyone’s poke that makes the wheel round it’s all of them right so but but you said hey you know what’s one of the dominant spokes you know what’s the hub you know I mean it says it in the good
book its retain your youthful enthusiasm and via all the older guys that I know that are young they’re all enthusiastic excited you know they’re retaining it you said something interesting about choose in this in this conversation that you’re having or this article that was published you grew up barefoot in Hawaii right first of all we couldn’t afford shoes you didn’t want how fuze on in Hawaii anyway have to tell my loss all my dues
you know I mean when we did wear shoes they’re only slippers or thongs or whatever we want to call them but they weren’t exactly a shoe all the studies are like hey we should all be barefoot and something about you know barefoot definitely connects you to the earth and you absorb negative ions through being barefoot and I mean you know our feet were designed to be you know pretty much other than maybe a moccasin or something to keep your feet warm if you lived in
the snow or something but you know your feet are you know it’s a way to touch it’s how we touch and so in a way if you you know if you’re always insulated you know how smooth is skin when you have a blow on oh it’s not that smooth that’s alert I mean what is evolved for you what does change for you I mean are you more patient when you’re surfing are you more patient with it and does that relate back to your own personal life it’s almost as if surfing is a type of
philosophy and it teaches you so much about life well I mean first of all all the real lessons I’ve learned the ocean stop I went to the school of ocean and there you learn you know the fundamentals of life you learn humility and discipline and perseverance and you fear I mean you learn you want to talk about all the things you learn and all the important things you learned they all you know and every great thing I’ve ever been gifted
to me has come from the ocean and whether it’s things I’ve done the ocean that have you know gotten the gifts bestowed upon me or things I’ve learned from the ocean that has allowed me to be able to receive the things that I’ve been gifted I mean it Cisco it doesn’t end but I think you know I I don’t consider myself a very patient person but you know I had a writer once tell me he goes you know you know I realize it surfers are some of the most patient
people in the world I just about fell out of my chair I was like you obviously but he said you know but you guys are willing to wait a lifetime for a moment and I said olestra I mean and we are and we are genuinely willing to wait a lifetime for a moment I mean I would wait 50 years for an opportunity to to ride a certain kind of wave and I would prepare myself for 50 years to be able to ride that wave and/or be there for that moment um and yeah I think my
children at this point are teaching me the other side of patience which is with all of the small stuff and less selfishness and more selflessness I definitely feel like the more you can take your feelings of accomplishment or your successes out of the hands of humans and put them in your own the more successful you’ll be in a more accomplished will be you know when you’re young and aggressive and Montenegro of yourself you have one out
of two but then when you’re you know a little more seasoned in a little more experienced and a little more satisfied you have to change your approach and what I’ve learned is that the more I can continue to control my feeling of success the more successful I’ll be if I have the ability to go out into the ocean and do something that brings me a feeling of accomplishment and come back and then bringing that feeling of accomplishment back to my
house um the better person I am the better husband I am the better boyfriend I am the better father I am a better person I am and so now I try to pursue that now I spend a lot of time pursuing that ability and also to bring that feeling of success that I’ve I’m learning how to bestow upon myself yeah that’s such a profound statement to you know be able to bring that back what you’ve learned back into your everyday life because I
mean if you’re this glory Surfrider and you’re just kind of just riding these waves but everyone kind of thinks you’re an asshole I mean what’s the what would be the point of that right exactly you know we say we have a sink I did away it’s not who you are it’s hyung ya know Melanie one of our listeners submitted this question she asks when and where was the best ride of your life just last week okay the best fried is the last ride that was
a good ride no I mean you know listen I’ve had so many phenomenal rides I mean one of the most famous rides that I’ve ever had was one in Tahiti when when I wrote a wave at the time that was said to be unraidable and impossible I’ve had incredible rides of my life at a famous wave called jaws on Maui there’s a famous stunt man that once said you know never let your memories be bigger than your dreams so I don’t dwell on the past but I think I’ve had so many
incredible ride in my lifetime it’s hard to say one was better than the other it was this maybe they’re just been all been equally great just different and there’s been too many to even count but I mean I definitely have had two monumental moments you know at both in Maui and Tahiti but I did you know like I said literally I had a ride last week that was one of those special ones that I did you know I think it’s about when you do something that you’ve never done
I think each time you do that that’s a monumental want to so I know that wasn’t the short answer but that’s the only one I have and no worries you know there’s there’s such a large philosophy behind all this and one of the anecdotes that I’ve heard about surfing is that when you start to panic like let’s say that you kind of eat a wave and you’re you just you crash out and you’re under the water if you panic in that moment you
only have like 10 to 15 seconds of air but if you remain calm in that moment you have up to a minute of air or longer as a better life yeah so I mean do you do you find that to be true and you have you found that to be accurate in your experience absolutely I mean I think because I was in so many heavy situations from such a young age for so many times you become very knowledgeable about the liability of panic and that how panic will will
undermine your ability to survive and so panicking is a liability and you learn that quick and there’s a time there’s a time to go all out and you know and give it your all at the potential cost of thing you gain time by slowing down it’s just the irony of it you know then you think law if I speed up I’ll gain time but you gain time by slowing down and then actually there’s a strange phenomenon that occurs where when you have heightened awareness that you
actually can speed up assessment you know and that actually slows down time it gives you time else in the time expands because your assessment has sped up and I describe it a little bit like making slow-motion film where they speak the camera speed the shutter speed up in order to create emotion well when you imagine assessment the shutter speed so the quicker you can see here listen to that thing and assess the more time that
you’ll gain yeah yeah for sure you know there there was an element of your career where you refused to compete professionally and yet you dominated the industry why did you refuse to do this in a professional standard well the culmination of a couple of different reasons part of it was because when I grew up I was exposed to kind of the injustice of judgment and surfing and that surfing is really art and it’s to self-expression and I came from a
generation at which surfing was still under more of an exploratory stage in its development it hadn’t been really corporatized it hadn’t been boxed up yet and they didn’t have a you know the whole focus wasn’t on the tour and that whole thing and it was more like art my stepdad was a phenomenal surfer I watched him go through some role of trials and tribulations with participating in the structured competitions and I watched his fate be
determined by other people that were probably not nearly as good a surfer as he was but yet there were the so-called experts and I decided at a young age that I wouldn’t subject my performances to those people and you know I played around when I was little in surfing competitions because it was fun it was with the friends you want some some toys or whatever candy whatever couple t-shirts or something some fun there was it and then when money came along and
the whole thing changed it kind of had a tendency to make me aggressive which I think I was already naturally too aggressive I didn’t need a reason to be more aggressive for me I think that aggression was distraction from actually surfing you know I told somebody yeah I think the reason why I never competed it was because I’m too competitive I always thought I’ll go my route which is if I’m the best surfer in the biggest and heaviest conditions and that kind of
pretty much takes care of itself I don’t need to have anybody determine whether I’m great or not if I think if I’m doing things no one else is doing or performing in a way in the in what I consider the heaviest conditions then kinda puts me on my own platform and ultimately people will how do you do that you know you’re a basketball player but somehow you’re not playing in the NBA and I just explained it normally you know an athlete is sponsored or they get
aid because they’re getting exposure on they’re on TV every night they’re you know so the they get paid because they get seen and so but I because of the nature of the things that I was able to do and have done did that got me a lot of exposure so I just kind of bypassed the middle part which is I didn’t need a platform I was to go directly to the the exposure side which led to sponsorships and other things like that I always say I you know
I hate to be told what to do I don’t want to be told when to go in the water and when to come in I want to feel it go when I want to perform how I want to then I think with that format it allowed me to maybe do things and perform in a way that was much more true to myself and and at the end really allowed me to go to higher levels of performance and maybe much higher than I would have ever ever been able to have I been in a competitive environment hey guys you
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[Music]
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